The present invention relates to sunshine shelter, and more particularly to an extensible sunshine shelter apparatus for window area of a passenger transportation such as vehicle, airplane, ship and ferry, etc. The extensible sunshine shelter apparatus of the present invention can prevent the radiation of sun shine from attacking the passengers without obstructing the passengers' field of vision. The basic inventive conception of the present invention is disclosed in the Inventive Disclosure Number 394322, 401502, 408865, and 410345 submitted by the applicant.
It is well known that overmuch exposure under sunshine does no good to human health, for example it hurts human skin and eyes and even causes skin cancer. However, the drivers or the passengers on those transportation such as trains, buses, ships, and airplanes are always inevitably disturbed or hurt by the radiation of sunshine. Most people complain about the radiation of sunshine because it does hurt to their skin and makes their skin aging and becoming rough and tanned with wrinkle.
Conventional method for reducing the shortcomings mentioned above is to tint all window glasses. However, it is illegal in most of the states in United States because the tinting may reduce the vision of the drivers and passengers, especially at night and cloudy weather. In mass transportation, such as airplanes, ships, trains, and buses, integral rigid curtains or cloth curtains are utilized to cover the entire window area for preventing the sunshine to disturb the passengers. But, in the meantime, the curtains would obstacle the whole field of vision of the passengers in the meantime.
When the vehicles are driven under sunshine, the strong sunshine may shine upon the drivers' faces and eyes that the drivers may be annoyed by those discomfort, uneasiness and inconvenience caused by the strong sunshine. It may affect the drivers' driving judgment and cause much hazard and unexpected danger during driving.
A pair of conventional shelter wings are mounted on an upper edge of a front windshield of a vehicle. The driver and the front passenger can swing the shelter wings toward the front windshield for shading the upper portion of the windshield to prevent the sunshine from shining directly upon the driver's and the front passenger's eyes. However, the shelter wings also obstacle portion of the windshield that reduces the field of vision of the driver that lessens the driving safety. Moreover, when the driver change the car's direction, he or she has to use one hand to re-adjust the position of the shelter wing from the front windshield to the side window. It may divert the driver's attention and cause accident. Besides, the faces, hands and the bodies of the driver and the front passenger are still exposed to the sunshine from most directions. The defectives cause by the sunshine to human skin are unavoidable.
Most drivers have such experience that when the vehicle park outdoor under the sunshine, the sun radiation may directly shine on the vehicles. The airtight interior of the vehicle will become hot an stuffy for re-entrance. Especially the steering wheel will be heated to become hand burning. The driver has to open the doors to enable air circulating for a while until the interior temperature decreases, and then starts the engine to run the air condition before the driver and the passengers get in the vehicle. It wastes much of time, so that to some impatient people, they may rush in the vehicle and drive. The extremely hot interior may affect the driving attention of the driver and the burning steering wheel is difficult to operate that may cause unexpected accident.
Two common devices are used currently to solve the aforesaid problems, which are a cardboard shelter and a twisted shelter for covering the entire front windshield of a vehicle. The cardboard shelter is made of hard cardboard paper and is foldable. The twisted shelter is made of nylon cloth with two circular springs mounted therein and is also foldable by twisting. Such conventional shelters are very troublesome that the driver has to unfold and extend it to cover the entire front windshield while parking. Before driving, the driver also has to refold and remove it from the front windshield. The folding and unfolding, as well as the installing and removing, operations are too troublesome and require much time since the interior space of a vehicle is too narrow for operating a shelter as large as the windshield. Moreover, we need to reserve some room for storing up the conventional extensible shelter when it is not used. The most essential shortcoming of such conventional extensible shelters is that since the space between the front windshield and the steering wheel and the back sight mirror is so narrow, every time when they are unfolded to cover or removed from the windshield, the back sight mirror may be bumped to move away from its original position. The driver has to reset the position of the back sight mirror before driving every time.